


I Couldn't Feel, So I Would Touch

by docnoctem



Category: Gorillaz
Genre: "character study" is codeword for obnoxious purple prose writing style i can't seem to stop, Intrusive Thoughts, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Shotgunning, old man wanting to choke an even older man in a consensual way, recreational not-kissing your bandmate but also it's definitely kissing you're only fooling yourself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-24 02:14:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15620265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/docnoctem/pseuds/docnoctem
Summary: "As his chest swells with the breath shared between them, foul and far too intimate, it makes him feel a bit dizzy to realize how little about them exists separately anymore." Oneshot. 2D and Murdoc share a joint and are, as ever, not very good for each other.





	I Couldn't Feel, So I Would Touch

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, first Gorillaz fic here. It's, uh... it's not much, plot-wise, but I had a little bug to write some shotgunning between these repressed knuckleheads. Title is from "Mouth of the Devil" by Mother Mother, which isn't too bad of a 2Doc song.

The room is almost silent, save for the metallic flick of a lighter and the occasional long exhale, but Murdoc could’ve sworn he was hearing music. Tune slightly off from the buzz in his head, he remembers how they used to do this in Stu’s bedroom back in Crawley, in cloudy-white daylight hours with The Stranglers on the record player— after he’d suffered the accidents but before he’d sharpened up enough to resent Murdoc for them— a time when they could share a joke just as easily as a joint and laugh like they really meant it. Like things were looking up for them, and the disorganized pages of would-be-scrapped lyrics were just the beginning. The beat gets lost in his brain as idle chatter drowns it out.

 _“Y’reckon Burnel ever thought he jus'— just had to give singing a go? Like, had to do it ‘cause the bass couldn’t sing for him, and he wanted the words to be his?"_ Stu’s voice in his memory sounds tinny and too far-off, practically unintelligible, though Murdoc thinks that last part’s more or less still true. _“…But he really made the bass sing. D’you know what I mean?”_

 _“Listen, if you’ve got to ask if I know what you’re on about, just skip it and assume that I don’t. Save us the air, alright?”_ One of them laughs, and he wants it to be Stu, but he can’t be sure. It’s gotten harder than it should be to recognize that sound straight away. He isn’t sure if that conversation even really happened or if it’s just something tenable he’s pieced together.

More than a decade-and-a-half's passed, and they’re convened in 2D’s bedroom now; a room that’s traded overstuffed notebooks for an underused Macbook and boasts a ceiling so tall it has never been christened by the crown of his head. The sun had long set from the window’s view by the time he’d come prowling, but Murdoc hadn’t bothered to turn on a light when he kicked the door shut. He preferred the reddish-pink glow of the lava lamp that, judging by the goo settled lifelessly at the base, was surely starting to overheat on the end table. It made the two of them look warmer, a little less their age and a little more like proper mates, not just guests wearing the clothes of the friends they used to be. The song in his memory trails off as his focus shifts back, and he wonders if it’d sounded happier back then, if it was just his own fractured brain mucking the rhythm up. He decides it doesn’t really matter much as he plucks the joint from his bandmate’s offering hand.

2D lies back against the bed and stares upward to follow the wisps of smoke slowly dissipating above him, his eyes inky and dull, failing to catch any reflection in the dim room; nestled in the stark black of the sheets, it was as if his eyes were pits, hollow and bottomless, stretching straight through to the other side. There was a sick impulse deep in Murdoc’s gut to cup his upper face, fingers creeping along the shell of his ear and into an unnatural-looking thicket of hair, and hook his thumbs into the seemingly empty craters, to hold him in place as invasively as he could. Not for the first time, Murdoc’s glad he isn’t quite high enough to vocalize the thought.

This conscious attention on his sobriety makes Murdoc frown and bring the joint back to his lips again, sucking in as much smoke as his battered lungs would allow, his body’s protest against _any_ deep breathing audible through his mangled nose. Holding the pull, he leans over 2D but stays just far enough above him to taunt, and opens his mouth to let the tip of his tongue hang flat over his lower lip; smoke clouds around Murdoc’s face, going wasted in the space between them. He smirks as faintly as a showman like himself is capable of, challenging ( _daring_ , you understand, most certainly _not_ pleading) the other to close the distance he won’t.

Black eyes sunken and itching under the haze, 2D’s face is unimpressed. He understands Murdoc to be “challenging” in most departments, but the invitation of intoxicated contact is last among them. Lifting one lanky arm, he moves as if he were being slowed by an ocean between them rather than a heady fog, and grips Murdoc’s chin between his thumb and index finger. He shuts Murdoc’s mouth and tilts his head up, fingers ghosting over his jaw for a moment before dragging down his neck; he stops there and flattens his palm against his throat, feeling the sinewy muscles beneath his skin constrict from the strain of holding his breath, and from the masochistic thrill of hands on his windpipe. On another day 2D would quite like to stay there, to increase the pressure of his hold and keep pressing a few beats longer than he should, but he’s already had a pill or four within the hour and is feeling comfortable at his regular, _functioning_ level of disillusion with Murdoc. He drops his hand to his chest instead, admiring the jut of his collarbone before giving him a light shove. The push is too half-hearted to actually move Murdoc but he leans back anyway, relaxing until his shoulders meet the wall and drawing his legs in lazily, letting them crook to the side as if he didn’t really care whether they ended up open or not. He blows the smoke out in a huff, a residual flavor he's ingested far too much tobacco and Tanqueray throughout his life to really taste anymore feeling heavier on his tongue than he’d like.

2D sits up and scrutinizes the other’s posture for a moment before shuffling onto his knees and following. He slots himself between Murdoc’s legs; his right hand rests just above his knee and he thoughtlessly presses against it, pushing his leg outward uncomfortably, while his left hand retrieves the spliff from the other. It’s barely noticeable in his fingers, so small now that it’s testing his motor skills to hold such a precise hand gesture, but he has enough concentration left to fit it between the spaces in his front teeth and inhale, lungs burning and thoughts slowing as he tries to pull all that’s left of it in one drag. Accepting his limitations, a marked difference between himself and the man watching him, he stubs out the remains against the wall by Murdoc’s head, not mindful enough to care about the blackened smudge it leaves. Dipping his head, he matches Murdoc’s stare and waits. He wants to hear him swallow hard and ask to taste, hear him whisper something filthy and honest, feel hands on his collar pulling him close and cradling his jaw.

Instead, Murdoc whines through his nose and spits “Go on then.”

That was about as good as it was going to get. 2D slips a hand past his neck to tightly grasp the hair at the base of his skull and twists, craning Murdoc’s head back as he leans in. Murdoc smiles without even a passing flinch at that and lets his mouth fall open readily. Their lips hover and bump against each other without real force, crooked teeth knocking against jagged ones to punctuate 2D’s head tilting to the side as he exhales, threads of smoke escaping through the edges of his mouth; if he could, Murdoc would snake his tongue out and block those openings, seal up the hinges of his jaw so he could greedily keep this between them. That doesn’t ever seem to work for them though, he muses—filling in the gaps.

The smoke is sweet and it only tastes sweeter on the hot breath that carries it, and true to his addictive nature he’s gasping in more before he’s swallowed it down. His eyes water, and his head spins, and 2D’s groin presses up against the seat of his pants as his aging and aching body folds in on itself, and it’s not enough. He can feel the slope between where 2D’s front teeth are and where they aren’t, and he’s still not close enough. Murdoc stops himself from locking his legs around 2D’s hips; he knows that isn’t what he means. What he doesn’t know is how to mean it in a way he can say out loud, so he softens his panting and smoothes his hands down 2D’s face, pausing only briefly to cover the space around their mouths, and does his best to match his breathing. The smoke is thinning and he counts the measures of his breath like a metronome, savoring it. 2D’s free hand had been gripping his thigh, nails digging into denim already worn enough to tear, but it starts to instinctively slide back and forth in rhythm while the thumb caught in his hair rubs the same pattern against his scalp. It’s easy to fall in sync with him—he wishes it were harder. Seems fair that it should be harder.

As his chest swells with the breath shared between them, foul and far too intimate, it makes him feel a bit dizzy to realize how little about them exists separately anymore. He thinks that should make him happy, make him feel close enough, but that’s just too abstract or maybe too romantic to suit him. He knows two halves can still make a broken whole. He knows so long as he’s one of them, the gaps never get filled.

The last traces of smoke have already faded from 2D’s breath, but he stays in place, gangly form hunched over the other. Between the wall and his proximity he’s nearly bending Murdoc in two, and he knows that can’t be comfortable, but he isn’t too fussed about Murdoc’s comfort— a neat trick the pills do, that. He’s more interested in how his long nails feel on his cheekbones, or how his elbows press dents into his stomach when he drags those nails down enough to trap his forearms between them. He’s interested in how small Murdoc looks when he sees him up close. It’s a little funny, in the way the only knots he’s been able to tie since ‘97 are a little "funny”, how much bigger he’d managed to look in 2D’s eyes for such a formative stretch of years. He untangles his fingers from that mop of hair and cups the back of his neck instead, his grip tight enough to be painful. That gesture isn’t so difficult for him, thankfully— the line between his head and his hands isn’t too tangled and _funny_ to hold.

He wants to peel his other hand off Murdoc’s thigh and stamp it down over his mouth, feel him smile perversely against his palm, but he doesn’t.

He wants to pull back just far enough to force a repulsed grimace and spit over his shoulder, but he doesn’t.

He wants to stop the charade of two middle-aged men breathing into each other and kiss him plainly, but he doesn’t. He knows what Murdoc’s allowed him to have, but what he’s allowed himself to take is too obscured for him to see while he’s medicated. It’s like he’s looking in at what he wants through some sort of mottled glass around it, making all the soft edges look sharp, and what’s in the center is… distorted, and hard for him to understand. It looks a little _funny_ , and that’s his cue not to trust himself alone with it.

Instead, he keeps breathing because he knows he can, and that’s a certainty he hasn’t always had. He turns enough to feel the warm air ghosting over his face and cranes his neck down to bump his cheek against Murdoc’s. The older twitches involuntarily a few times and he straightens back up in sympathy, but he fixes 2D with such a sleazy stare that he’s reluctant to give him room to uncurl his body.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to get your arthritis in a tizzy, geezer.” 2D almost sounds like someone else when he jokes like that, but he thinks maybe that’s who he should be right now. He’s forgotten what it felt like to be Stuart anyway. Murdoc grins, but his eyes remain leering.

“Didn’t you ever go driving with a bad transmission just t’feel it sputter? Ride of your life, mate, you’re missing out.”

“Your head’s not right.” He murmurs, hands fumbling for a safe spot to rest on the legs still framing his body. “Guess I can’t say much ‘bout a damaged head, though. You saw to that.”

“That’s real generous, but I’d fancy the lovely Lady Tosspot saw to that.”

“Your _car_ saw to that.” He doesn’t know why he still gets to him.

“So it wasn’t the pills, then?”

“Your bleedin’ island saw to it, Christ, Murdoc—“ 2D stops and leans his head back, not really feeling up to this conversation right now with his senses so sluggish. If Murdoc has the capacity to feel guilty about that, he doesn’t show it. Not a wince, not an averted gaze— if anything, he looks up more pointedly at him, heavy brows nearly meeting his eyelashes in concentration. The bags under his eyes do nothing to weigh his focus down, and 2D wants to put together another joke about his age but it just feels inauthentic when he’s so aware of his own. He supposes that seeing him shrink away and blink back tears wouldn’t feel any better, wouldn’t vindicate anything that had happened. All it would do is cushion the regret between them, drape the wound with satin so the red would look more striking against it and turn the apologies he’s never said to sonnets, and 2D doesn’t have any more use for that now than he did then. He’s already built a career on making poetry of his silence without Murdoc’s help.

In the fading haze he remembers vaguely why this sort of staring contest is so familiar, and if he were a little more sober, he might be able see through that mottled glass and recognize the thing he’s _not_ allowed to want from Murdoc is resolution. Why he still feels a need for anything short of that from him is a question too big for tonight, so he stretches over Murdoc’s leg and finds his footing off the side of the bed to avoid it. He’s still got that old record player and he thumbs through the vinyls, moving from crate to crate until he lands on something agreeable.

“The Stranglers. I remember you lifted this in Soho.” He calls over his shoulder, already sliding the yellowed sleeve off and fitting the needle in place. Feedback pops and crackles for a few seconds before the opening notes start.

Murdoc hums out of key as he tries to place the tune. He thinks he might've heard it recently. “Nice ‘n’ Sleazy?”

“Depends on who’s asking.” 2D replies without missing a beat, settling back on the bed again where he’d started, his head sinking out of view in the black of the sheets. Murdoc chuckles throatily at him and shuts his eyes, biting down the offer on his tongue and listening to the bass sing.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the plug, but I haven't had much opportunity to meet people in the community, so! I've got a 2Doc sideblog at tothedarkdarkseas.tumblr.com, and some general Gorillaz on my main docnoctem.tumblr.com-- come say hi if you'd like!


End file.
